Sunday, May 24, 2015

A birthday party, finally!

On May 16, Eloise scored a goal in her soccer game. It might have been by accident, but when the ball came near her, she kicked it the right direction and it went straight into the net! If you have ever watched three and four year olds play soccer, you know how rarely the planets align to make the soccer ball go into the net.

In bigger news, as far as she was concerned (soccer happens every Saturday, after all) Eloise finally got to have her animal costume birthday party. She considered a handful of animal costume ideas, but settled on a cat costume when she saw my hair ears and cat makeup.

B wanted to be a bird, but he also wanted to have cat whiskers and a cat nose. Jared was a dog, when he felt like sporting a dog mask.

Sammy slept through most of the party in his yellow Big Bird suit.

Rebecca also decided to be a cat. It was a little bit harder to get her very long hair tamed into cat ears, but we did it.

We ended up with two dolphins (one with bear ears), a couple of monkeys, a jaguar, a mouse, a cougar (Price in his BYU shirt), some cats, a bird/cat, a dog, some foxes, and Todd as a sloth. His idea was that he wouldn't have to move off of the couch if he was an animal so slow that it grows algae on its fur, so he parted his hair down the middle and fashioned himself some long claws. His claws (cut out of paper plates) were appropriated by a lot of sloth impersonators before I got a chance to take a picture of the epic Todd sloth.

The excitement of costume wearing might have been enough without any activities, but we had a small craft, assembling a foam lion, and Todd played every animal related song he could think of for dancing. I thought it was great that all of our friends got into the spirit of animal costumes by making their own costumes. That is a huge part of the fun for us.

This year for Eloise's strawberry cake, we made a heart shaped chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and put strawberries between the layers and on top. It was a hit.

Eloise was so excited about her party that she told everyone she met about it for two days before and after. This means that she overcame her shyness around adults who are not her parents to speak up and share her exciting news. It was quite the happening party. Happy birthday, big girl/cat/leopard/turtle/bird/elephant/koala/kangaroo/gila monster/dog!